Hate the BCS? Root for the Big 12 … and against the SEC

*** Note: This item is taken from my column in Thursday’s Mercury News and is similar to my BCS disaster scenario post from late October …

So Texas could get two-stepped, which would play fabulously in Berkeley (cosmic justice!), horrifically in Austin (that dastardly Stoops!) and create a fair amount of outrage nationally.

If Oklahoma beats Missouri handily on Saturday, then the No. 2 Sooners probably will earn a berth in the Bowl Championship Series title game at the expense of No. 3 Texas, which beat Oklahoma on a neutral field.

To BCS critics like, oh, the President-elect, an Oklahoma end-around could be seen as further evidence of a broken system that must be shoved aside in favor of a playoff.

But it’s just the opposite.

This is the kind of controversy the BCS powerbrokers love – the kind that generates enormous interest in the sport, dominates headlines and water cooler discussions and, most importantly, doesn’t materially affect any of the Big Six conferences.

Oklahoma over Texas, Texas over Oklahoma – they’re both Big 12 teams, which means the conference gets to divvy up the $17.5 million title game paycheck no matter what.

If you want the system to change, you need a doomsday scenario that wounds the pride and thins the wallets of an entire conference, not one team or another.

When it comes to the BCS, the power is not with the people. The power is with the commissioners of the six major conferences, who take orders from their presidents and chancellors.

Here’s what it means for BCS haters this year: You need the SEC, the most powerful football conference of them all, to get shut out of the national title game.

You need Oklahoma to play Texas.

Admittedly, that’s not a likely outcome. And it won’t happen if top-ranked Alabama beats Florida on Saturday for the SEC crown — the Crimson Tide would be a lock for the national championship game.

And the assumption is that if Florida wins, the No. 4 Gators would pick up enough votes and computer points to overtake No. 3 Texas (and Alabama, of course) and slide into the title game opposite Oklahoma.

The only chance for BCS haters involves Florida beating ‘Bama in a close, sloppy affair. Some voters might move the Gators ahead of Texas because they simply don’t want a Sooners-Longhorns rematch, or because they think the SEC champ deserves a berth in the title game.

But a few voters, which could be all it takes, might view a sloppy Florida victory as proof that the Big 12 really is the best conference — it’s clearly the most entertaining — and move Texas into the Two-hole, ahead of Florida and Alabama and behind only Oklahoma.

And heads would explode throughout the SEC.

It would mark the second time in four years that a deserving SEC champ had been left out of the national title game – in 2004, undefeated Auburn was squeezed out by Oklahoma and USC — and just might cause enough outrage for prompt conference executives to begin strong-arming their counterparts in the Big Ten and Big 12 into changing the system.

So if you want system-changing outrage, root for the SEC to get snubbed. Root for Oklahoma and Texas to make the title game.

My ultimate dream scenario didn’t come to fruition this year, but what I would have liked to see to create the ultimate chaos would be for all the BCS conference teams to have a minmimum two losses each while we have at least two non-BCS schools finish undefeated.

Can you imagine the uproar that would happen if a two loss Florida was playing a two loss TExas in the BCS championship game while Utah, Boise St, and Ball St sit in lesser bowl games undefeated? I think at that point the non-BCS commissioners might actually have some ammo to pressure Congress/Obama to get something moving in the right direction.

Anyways, on this topic, I have come up with a scenario where you can use the BCS and have a 16 team playoffs. Here is my dream (won’t happen of course):

First off, we do away with Conference Championship games and end the regular season the weekend of Thanksgiving (all regular games scheduled this week would need to be pushed back).

After using tiebreakers to determine all 11 conference champions (please spare the argument about CCG, is it really fair that Oklahoma is playing Missouri instead of Texas/Texas Tech, or last year when LSU played Tennessee instead of Georgia?). Then we use a BCS type system to determine the 5 at large schools and then the seeding of 1-16.

Using a points system that I have, I would seed like this (no arguments about this please, this is just hypothetical, Florida, Cincinnati should be higher I know):

Winners of that bracket move on to the Rose Bowl and Orange Bowls (since they are one week before BCS Championship game), In future years, these games would rotate.
Orange: Texas vs Alabama and Rose: Florida vs USC

The losers from the previous bracket would end up in the Sugar and Fiesta:
Sugar: Oklahoma vs Texas Tech and Fiesta: Utah vs Penn St

The losers from the first round (Dec 6) would still be eligible to play a bowl game, matchups could look like this:

The argument about how the regular season would matter less goes away by the draw of obtaining an extra home game, but also by scheduling stronger opponents would increase your seeding. In addition, the loser’s of round two still get their BCS paydays.

This also eliminates all of the 6-6 teams from the bowl picture and only one 7-5 team did not qualify, Fresno St (but this would be up to the bowls, not me).

This scenario will satisfy both the bowls and the clamor for a playoff. The only thing that gets eliminated are the conference championship games (again, I know this would never happen).

GoldenBear

Dean, I have to say that is a pretty good system. It is not what I envisioned, but it has some advantages over my preference (most significantly, all conference winners have a shot at the BCS). Your system is well thought out and well done. Left unsaid is that eliminating the conference championship games from the super-conferences (12 teams or more) would probably mean that they would have to drop some schools to get down to a round-robin format. It’s fair enough that Alabama doesn’t play Florida during the regular season (not part of their sub-conference) as long as they have to play them in a championship game in order to win the conference championship. Once you remove the conference championship game, you invite scenarios where Alabama could conceivably win the conference championship without playing other teams which might have laid claim on the top spot, like Florida or Georgia. That presents a problem, and so conferences would probably be best served to trim down to 10 teams so that they could all play each other.

Nevertheless, I like your idea.

My idea has always been an 8-team playoff, where the BCS bowls serve as the entry-point. This system would keep the entire bowl structure in place and only add 2 semi-final games betweent he BCS bowls and the championship game. This system could also maintain the traditional tie-ins for conference champs. Big East and ACC go to Orange. SEC goes to Sugar. Big 12 goes to Fiesta. Pac-10 and Big(11)Ten go to Rose. Two at-large teams would fill in the last Sugar and Fiesta slots. Winners play semi-final game in January. Championship ideally played during the Super Bowl Bye Week.

Downsides to my plan, where your plan is better: (1) your plan gives all conference champs a shot; (2) your plan doesn’t extend season into January (an excuse given for no-playoff).

My plan is better in the following areas: (1) more likely to be adopted because it keeps power in BCS conferences and doesn’t require changes to be made to BCS conference structures; (2) maintains traditional association of BCS bowls (especially important to Big(11)Ten and Pac-10).

SierraSpartan

For those Bad News Bears fans who are gloating at the possibility of Texas getting shut out of the national championship game, let me clue you in on something: Whomever Texas ends up playing had better double up on their traveling medical staff, as the Longhorns are going to look to send a statement.

And of course, we all remember the ‘statement’ that Tedford’s Teddies left everyone with after they felt they got jammed by the BCS that year, don’t we?

Dean

GoldenBear,

Yeah I know my plan has such a small shred of occurring, but it is fun to dream about.

While conferences would lose the CCG, the schools that qualify as seeds 1-8 would get gate revenue for an extra home game. That would offset that somewhat, maybe even give some of the proceeds to the conference. And if they did reach the second round of the playoffs, they would be assured of the BCS payday for the Rose, Orange, Fiesta and Sugar Bowls. This way a conference could get more than 2 teams into the $$.

In regards to the 12 teams only playing 8 of their 11 conference foes, I agree that could be a problem. Heck, the Big10 has that issue now with them only playing 8 of 10 teams. So it isnt unprecedented. A better tiebreak system would need to be established of course, but as the OK/TX debacle showed, that needs to be done anyways.

I’ve always maintained that the Pac10 has it right, a 10 team league, play all 9 conference foes and 3 OOC games. I have a different plan set aside for that. It would involve establishing 6 Major(BCS) and 6 minor(non-BCS) conferences of 10 teams each, but having one of each paired with the other. Sort of a sister conference thing. The toughest part of that would be the realignment and the loss of 6 BCS schools to “minor” status.

But if it was done, and there were 12, 10 team conferences, the schedules could be set up much batter. First OOC game would be against the same ranked school in the sister conference (1-1, 2-2, etc). Second OOC game would be against a rotating BCS conference (similar to how the NFL does it) where say the Pac10 plays the Big12 this year, the SEC the next and so on. A pairing of 1-1, 2-2, would also happen there as well. The non-BCS schools would follow suit. Then the 3rd OOC game could be for any other game they want to schedule (Ie USC-ND, rivalries).

But no way that ever gets established either. C’est la vie.

Vince

Dean, your system hurts rivalry games too much. In that scenario, teams could go into their last (rivalry) game with a playoff spot wrapped up. If USC loses to UCLA this weekend, they should be out. Period. Any playoff formula should account for that, or college football would lose a lot of what makes it so special.

Papa John

Nice system, Dean. I would push for a 16-team playoff as well, so that all FBS conferences are also BCS conferences.

Dean

Vince,

I don’t see how that would matter. If you lose your last “rivalry” game, that would definitely affect your seeding, if not even knock you from the playoffs altogether. Let’s say USC loses this weekend, they would drop from the #3 seed at home to a probable road game as the #9 or 10 seed. And if OSU was the #10 seed going into that rivalry game, they most likely would fall out of the playoffs altogether.

I don’t see how that would affect a rivalry game anyways. If USC can’t get up for UCLA, they deserve to fall anyways, playoffs or not.

Broncoboss

Then there were two! After Ball State’s big loss to Buffalo last night there are only two Div. 1 teams out of 119 Div. 1 football teams that finished the season undefeated. Congrats to Boise State and Utah. May the BCS will talk kindly of them.

BamaGrad

Uh, Bronco, you mean two non-BCS teams, right? I think there might be one other team undefeated right now . . . let’s see, who could that be?

Broncoboss

BamaGrad, sorry I got ahead of myself. There will be only two Div. 1 teams undefeated after today’s Alabama vs Florida game! The Tide will go down then there will be two! By the way Div. 1 is the key not whether a team is a BCS team, or a non-BCS team. Division 1 is Division 1 just ask Oklahoma. Once again I apologize for jumping the gun & giving Bama the loss before they earn it!

Broncoboss

Then there was two! BamaGrad, now there is only two undefeated Div. 1 teams this year. Bama lost!